Posts Tagged ‘kids’

I’m not sure what little kid didn’t play with boxes when they were little. I can remember occasions when my nieces and nephews would toss the toy aside to play with a box, building school buses or airplanes, playing house…even in this age of technology. So if you’ve ever painted on a box, cut holes in a box, stacked boxes or sat in an empty refrigerator box, you’ll enjoy this gangsta ode to crafts.

I’ve sewn up a few new custom coloring book designs for the Megnificent Made store! In addition to this new animal print book, you can find whales, apples and pears in fun spring and summer colors.

Megnificent Made takes your photographs and turns them into coloring books. Then, they get packaged in these cute fabric folders that hold a set of crayons! They’re great for travel, keeping kids busy, and make great keepsakes.

Speaking of great keepsakes, now is the time of year many people are looking for unique ones. It’s Graduation time! Everyone loves a little coloring, no matter what age. Why not put together some memories for your graduate’s big day? It’s a unique twist on a scrapbook or photo board. Let friends add their mark on your memories at your graduation party!

I was recently contacted on Etsy that Sunny Side Up Studios allowed her two little girls, ages 2 and 5, to put together a collection of must haves from Etsy sellers.

I am honored to say that these two lovely ladies chose my Apples and Pears Custom Photo Coloring book among 11 others for their Etsy Treasury!

Apples and Pears Custom Photo Coloring Book by Megnificent Made

Sunny Side Up Studios makes charming little Spool Dolls as well as some super cute hair clips for little girls. Her daughters made some really great choices to fill in the other 11 spots in their Treasury. I hope they get some of these goodies from their list! Check out the rest of their top etsy picks here.

The coloring books have been selling quite well lately thanks to all of the traffic I have received from Ohdeedoh, Apartment Therapy and other fantastic craft bloggers around the web. A lot of customers are using the Custom Photo Coloring books as Valentines Day gifts for the little ones in their lives! I appreciate the help spreading the word on my etsy store.

I’d like to mention now that promoting my etsy store on your blog can earn you a 5% discount on my etsy products so long as the post is made before a purchase and that the post is brought to my attention via megnificentmade@google.com

This post will give you a bit of information on cardboard furniture. I recently made this adorable little cardboard play table for my niece’s tea-party christmas present. It’s really easy to do, inexpensive (especially if you’re using recycled cardboard) and far more durable than you would think!

The first thing you’ll want to do is collect your cardboard. I won’t give you very exact measurements because it’s really up to you what size furniture you’d like to make. This tale is about 14 inches high and 2.5 ft square. I recommend you recycle cardboard. Go to your local grocery store or electronics store and ask for their boxes. I’ve done this before and got really great heavy-duty cardboard from a local fruit stand. For this table I bought cardboard at the art store for about $3 a sheet and it took three sheets. I just didn’t have time to run around and find any. For the top of the table I used three-ply cardboard for strength and the rest was made with single ply corrugated cardboard.

You will also need a good sharp box cutter, white tissue paper, gesso, a big foam paint brush, a glue gun and paper tape. Paper tape can be found at your art store. It is generally used for water-color painting. Paper tape has an adhesive on the back that is water activated. The benefit of this tape is that it is paper and when you paint over it will absorb paint rather than bead up.

These are the pieces I cut out for the table…

The side of my table is scalloped but you can make that anyway you like. The picture on the right is the table leg. The table legs I made are 14 inches tall and 2in square. It’s important for the table legs that the corrugations in the cardboard runs verticle to give it strength. Where I’ve marked the dotted lines score the cardboard (don’t cut all the way through) and that will give you nice sharp corners on your table leg. The last panel is .25in wider so that it can over lap where it will glue together.

Get out your glue gun and start gluing all of your pieces together. apply glue to the edge of the table top piece and attach the table side. The next part is important for strength. Use the glue gun like a caulking gun and run it along all of the seams forcing more glue into cracks and making the seams smooth and strong. Do it on the inside seams.

Next you will use the paper tape!Water activate the sticky side of the tape with your foam brush and use the tape to cover any raw edges. Use it along all of the seams and press it flat. To cover round edges cut darts out of the tape and smooth it around the edges.

Next, grab your gesso, tissue paper and foam brush. Paint the table and apply sheets of tissue paper as you go. Put tissue paper down on the wet gesso and paint more white gesso over it. This will give you a good plain white base to paint on later. Make sure not to run your brush over the tissue paper too many times or it will tear.

In this photo you can see the glue used as caulk on the rough edges and the paper tape covering the seams on the inside of the table. This table isn’t as finished as some proper cardboard furniture pieces but it’s for kids so I didn’t go nuts. I wanted the legs of my table to be detachable so I created pockets to shove the legs into. They’re really snug so that the legs don’t fall out.

Paint the table as you like. I did a yellow wood grain on the legs and painted the top like a table-cloth. Finish the piece with a few coats of varnish, this will make it much more durable and keep it safe from water!

Don’t limit your cardboard furniture to your kids! I’ve made pieces for my apartment before and they are so unique and beautiful. Most people think it is wood until they pick it up! They’re extremely durable and sturdy. I have a chest of drawers that I can stand on. Once they’re varnished they are quite safe.

As promised! A photo of the completed strawberry short-cake! A few weeks ago I posted a HOW-TO for this adorable felt play food which you can find here. You can find a tutorial on the strawberries here. I try to make lots of How-To posts so check out that whole section of the blog if you’re feeling crafty.

It took me a while to get this posted because I’ve been working so hard on all my christmas goodies. This tea party for my nieces (more of which can be seen here) has been my big project since October and I’ve poured a lot of time and love into. I absolutely cannot wait until Christmas to see the reveal.

I spent yesterday evening constructing a table for their party which is a really simple and fun project I will post more about soon. It is made of cardboard but is very very structurally sound. I’ve made cardboard furniture before and absolutely love the concept of recycled furniture that can be so creative and unique visually. I’ll be sure to post more about that soon.

I took all of these photos before the table was completed but I really love how all of the elements of their tea party together are such beautiful bright colors. It’s just so pretty to look at. I can’t help but leave it all assembled until Christmas.

Since these photos I have painted a purple lace doily on the table with their initials as well as painted the legs of the table pale yellow with faint wood grain. The scallops of the table has purple trim now too. I didn’t make them chairs for their table because, as you can see in earlier posts about the project, I had made them special embroidered and fringed pillows to sit on.

The latest addition to the table are these adorable felt fruits from a pattern by UmeCraft on Etsy. The apple velcros together and slices apart. The Orange comes apart into 6 slices, and the banana peels!

Their dessert selection is not limited to Strawberry Shortcake! These girls can also pick from four different cupcakes! This one here is their lemon merengue with orange peel and a lemon wedge. I made special cupcake wrappers with their names on them in three bright fun colors too. In my final tea party post I will show more in detail on the cupcakes.

If you’d like to see more photos of what I’ve been up to with this project, please visit the tea party post to see more about the table ware, and my flickr site to see food more in detail.

I can promise you two more posts on this subject…if you don’t mind! One on cardboard furniture with this table as the feature, and one on the final project after christmas. It’ll be a part of my slew of holiday gift ideas for 2010!

First step is to make the top and bottom of the cake. I took a cereal bowl that was the size I wanted my finished cake to be and traced it on the felt. The pink will be the top of the cake, the tan will be the bottom. To make perfect quarters for the slices of your cake, fold the circle in half and cut along the fold. Take the half circle, fold it in half again and cut along the fold. You should end up with 4 pink quarters and four tan quarters like this.

The size of the next pieces will depend on the size of the circle you’ve cut. For the outer edge of the cake you will cut a rectangle out of the pink. Determine how tall you want your cake. Mine was 3 inches tall, therefore my pink rectangle was 3 inches tall. The length of your rectangle is determined by how long the curved edge of your cake quarters.

Pink rectangle = 3 inches tall x lenght of curve

The next piece you will cut are the insides of the cake slices. They will be cut from tan felt and have the same height of your cake. The length of the tan rectangle is determined by measuring the straight side of the cake quarter.

You will need 2 tan rectangles per wedge, and one pink. Total…8 tan pieces and 4 pink pieces.

Next you will cut a looooooooong wavy strip of pink felt. This will be your layer of cream in the cake. Put two tan pieces together end to end, lay the pink strip over the top, and cut it to fit the length of each piece. You should end up with 8 pieces of wavy pink filling, one for each tan rectangle. Stitch them to the center of the tan pieces with pink floss.

Start to stitch it all together! I started by putting the filling pieces beside the pink topping and sewing along the straight sides of the topping wedge with pink floss. From there I stitched the pink rectangle to the pink curve of the wedge.

Continue on with the pink floss to stitch the pink rectangle to the sides of the tan rectangles.

Switch to tan thread sew the point of the cake together. Stitch the tan wedge into the bottom of the cake making sure to leave a space to stuff the cake.

Stuff your cake making sure that you don’t over stuff it! You want your slices to fit together on the straight edges. Stitch it up and shape it nicely.

Next we’re going to make frosting. I went nuts with this but you can make as little or as much as you like. You’ll start by making a paper template of a pointed leaf shape about an inch long.

This next step can be done by hand stitching one by one, or you can cheat like me! Trace out this pattern on white felt so that the points of the shape touch but don’t over lap. Fold the felt over so that you will have two layers of this shape.

On the sewing machine, sew down the center of your row of frosting.. IMPORTANT.. back stitch over every spot where the shapes touch end to end. This way, you can cut out the shapes and the stitching won’t unravel.

Cut out each shape!

The two layer piece should unfold into an “X” shape. By sewing these pieces overlapping at the edge of your cake you create frosting!

With the size of my cake and my one inch pieces of frosting, it took 5 pieces to line one edge of each slice. I frosted the top and bottom edges of each slice, as well as a small circle of frosting in the center of the top of the cake. Frost it up!

If you’ve made the strawberries as well, arrange them and stitch them into your cake. Decorate it however you like. Try red velvet! Dark chocolate! What ever your felt tooth desires 🙂

UPDATE: For the finished cake and related items please follow the link to this post!